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permaculture - Re: [permaculture] Larry Santoyo's Plant List

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  • From: Toby Hemenway <toby@patternliteracy.com>
  • To: permaculture list <permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [permaculture] Larry Santoyo's Plant List
  • Date: Tue, 15 Nov 2005 12:25:50 -0800

Dave Jacke made the following amusing observation: if Russian olive is
rampant in your area, what possible harm could there be in planting one more
of this soil-restoring, wildlife-feeding, edible (etc., etc.) plant? The
seed burden will be dwarfed by what is already there.

I agree that goumi and E. x ebbingei are better choices for small-scale
projects.

Russian and autumn olive were distributed widely in the eastern US by
highway departments in enormous roadside planting projects; they are pretty
well naturalized now. They tend not to move into intact ecosystems, with the
possibility of remnant prairie, which is endangered by just about every tree
and shrub species, native or not, since we don't burn prairie any more. They
do like pasture and other artificially maintained grassland or disturbed
ground, but that's an economic and land use choice, not an ecosystem
preservation issue. Pasture (and unburned prairie) generally wants to become
forest if there's more than 20 inches of rain a year; the shrubs are just
doing their job.

Oh, yeah: I wonder how much funding NYIPC gets from Monsanto and other
herbicide companies. Most of the Invasive Plant Councils get lots
(California's was started by a Monsanto exec). They love the repeat
business. "Invasive" plant removal is a huge source of herbicide use--too
bad about those "natural, native ecosystems."

Sorry if I'm a broken record. A knee-jerk anti-exotic reaction will get from
me a knee-jerk "learn some basic ecology" response (I realize the posts came
from off-list).

Toby
www.patternliteracy.com


>
> "I consider Russian and Autumn Olive to be invasive.
> I believe one or both are on the invasive plants list of NYIPC.
> They also are very strong allelopaths, which could
> affect native plants. I hope you'll take it off your list.
> Thanks, Barbara"
>
> "Though I have much yet to learn about permaculture, I do know something
> about
> plants, and in particular, non-native invasive plants...several of the
> species
> on this list are non-native and some are considered invasive...if you are
> concerned at all about the integrity of natural, native systems, please
> avoid
> planting Elaeagnus angustifolia and E. umbellata, and crownvetch (Coronilla
> varia)...
>





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